


I Follow Rivers

by meggie272



Category: Free!
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Power Dynamics, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 21:10:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2083269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggie272/pseuds/meggie272
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he does not deserve this devotion. He takes it anyway, because he is greedy.</p><p>“We’re going to be famous, Sousuke,” he says.</p><p>(Sousuke is silently, fervently in love. Rin is confused.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Follow Rivers

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah I just wanted to push at the edges of that dynamic Rin and Sousuke have going, where Sousuke is quietly and angrily devoted to Rin. Set immediately after ep 4 of s2.
> 
> oop! edit because I forgot to mention, the title of the fic is taken from Lykke Li's song of the same name, which is what I listened to on repeat while writing this!

Sousuke is…well, he’s something else.

In many ways he is much like he was when they were kids, despite his almost terrifying growth spurt and those shoulder muscles he has now that are still making Rin blink. He didn’t think anyone could beat Tachibana in the shoulder game, but Sousuke is a serious contender.

He still swims fiercely, determinedly, as if he has a score to settle with the water. Haruka swims from love, and Tachibana swims from fear, and Rin swims from some bright tough bubble of joy inside, but he does not know what is in Sousuke’s mind as he dives in, his curve clear and exact as an arrow.

He’s still got those eyes, the vivid, near artificial blue of sunlight sparkling off chlorine. It is almost uncomfortable to look at, but in most lights it is tempered by a grey-green like an ocean storm, and by the mildness of his smile.

He’s still got the same presence. Quiet and unassuming, standing perfectly still with his hands in his pockets and his eyes lidded. Watching. Observing. Even when they were little he was like that, staring straight back at everyone with an expression that wasn’t a challenge, not exactly – more of a sizing up, a measuring, an evaluation. Rin, who spins in circles and loves and hates things too much, has always felt drawn to Sousuke’s quiet, unforgiving stoicism. Steady and unyielding and strong. He just exists, and lets Rin exist alongside him.

In many ways, Sousuke has grown up to be exactly what you’d expect. The calm, solitary child has become a calm, solitary young man, and he and Rin get on exactly as they always do, understanding each other without words.

But these days, Sousuke seems to _burn._ Sometimes, there is a fire in his expression, even as he stands still and quiet as a rock, and when their eyes meet, Rin feels like he is staring into the sun.

 

\-----

 

Under the stars and the glow of lamps, with sweat from the night run prickling and shiny on their necks, Sousuke tells Rin he wants to swim in the relay. Something changes. Something snaps. He seems to break apart a little, and Rin is scared, almost, but delighted. Somewhere in him, something is victorious, and growling.

Rin and Sousuke have been neck-to-neck their whole life. Now Rin has left Sousuke behind and in this moment he scrambles to catch up, his large hands curling into fists by his side.

 

\-----

 

Rin showers in the eerie fluorescent silence that public bathrooms have at night, and grins up at the ceiling. The water is hot enough to hurt.

 _Sousuke,_ he thinks, and smiles again.

 

\-----

 

He pads bare-foot into the room he shares with Sousuke, a towel draped over his head. It is completely pitch in here, blinds drawn, the beds and desks shadowy shapes looming against the wall.

“Sousuke?” he calls, softly.

He hears a quiet exhale, and then Sousuke says: “Up here.”

Rin looks. He is lying on his bunk, the top one, and as Rin’s eyes adjust he sees the long, dark shape of him, stretched out, with his hands folded behind his head.  

“Lying in the dark like a creep,” Rin chides.

“Everyone lies in the dark, every night.”

“Except vampires.” Rin makes a snapping noise with his teeth, very loud in the fuzzed silence.

Sousuke laughs, a soft little sound.  

Rin steps over and draws the blinds wide open. The darkness is limned with the glow from the lights outside, and it’s all shadowed, luminous blues and greys, like opening your eyes underwater. Now he can see what he’s doing, or close enough, and he throws the towel expertly so it drapes itself over the railing at the end of Sousuke’s bunk.

“Oi.” Sousuke says, and he sounds so much like Rin that Rin can’t help but laugh at him, laugh at them both. “Don’t throw your dirty laundry all over me, Matsuoka.”

Rin pulls off his shirt and balls it up in his hands. The night is warm outside but it is air-conditioned heavily in here and his skin prickles, naked against the cold. He chucks it at Sousuke’s face, and thinks he might get away with it seeing as Sousuke is staring at the ceiling vacantly, but he doesn’t. Sousuke’s hand snaps out to catch it in mid-air, and then he tucks it behind his head. Doesn’t miss a beat.

“Ehhh, you’re creepy,” Rin grumbles.

“Says the one who is stripping naked and throwing his clothes at me,” Sousuke says, not sounding terribly invested.

“If you’re shy at the sight of my body maybe you should leave the swim team.”

Sousuke makes a humming sound. “I’m not shy,” he says eventually.

“Well, are you sleepy?”

“Not really.”

So Rin pulls himself up on to the top bunk in one lithe movement. He’s quick, but Sousuke’s quicker as he swiftly draws his knees up and avoids his feet being landed on. 

“Hello,” Sousuke says, in that voice of his. So careful, deep. It crawls up Rin’s spine sometimes, the way it’s so different now.

Rin curls himself up and crosses his legs, wedging himself into a small, comfortable space, looking across the acres of legs and chest to where Sousuke is watching him steadily, propped up on his elbows. He is wearing long pyjama pants like Rin and a tank top that leaves his strong arms bare. Swimmer arms. Rin rests his head against the wall. It is cold and hard against his temple.

Sousuke clears his throat. “Good job today, talking to the team about the relay. You were very inspiring.”

Rin laughs. “Yeah, I saw the passion in your eyes, _Sousuke.”_

Sousuke smiles, his full, slow smile that is reserved for Rin. “You’re bad for me.”

“What, so having normal human feelings is bad, then?”

 Sousuke just shrugs at that, makes a non-committal noise. There’s silence for a while. Normally, Rin needs to be moving until he is exhausted – he has never been good at staying still. But here in the blue dream of the night with Sousuke he doesn’t mind sitting, he doesn’t mind not talking, he doesn’t mind that nothing’s in his mind except a faint, exhausted glow of happiness. He runs his fingers gently in little dreaming circles over Sousuke’s bedsheets, which are clean and soft and cheap.

“Speaking honestly, Rin, you’re a very good captain,” Sousuke says out of nowhere after a while, and the slight hesitancy in his usual steadfast tone makes Rin look up sharply.

“Uh. Thank you,” he nods, a little flustered. “It wasn’t what I planned, but Mikoshiba was convinced I was right for the job and…” He trails off, unsure how to finish. _I wanted to prove I could do it? Wanted to prove I was strong enough? Steady enough?_

“Hopeless romantics do make good leaders,” Sousuke says demurely, looking at his bare feet.

“You’re the hopeless romantic here!” Rin cries. “I was half expecting you to propose to me last night!”

And at that, Sousuke actually winces, folding himself up so he’s further away from Rin, the kind of instinctive curl you do when you remember something awful.

“Like I said, you’re bad for me.”

Oh, he’s _blushing._

“I appreciate it. I appreciate you,” Rin says, as casually as he can, and there is a little hot flare of adrenaline in his chest the way Sousuke’s blush deepens and his fingers twitch near imperceptibly.

“Stop teasing me.” Sousuke’s eyebrows draw down in a frown.

Rin kicks his ankle lightly. “I didn’t think anything could ever get to you.”

Sousuke looks down and lets out a long, slow breath. His face is shadowed. Rin watches him curiously. “Not much does.”

“You’ve always been a lone wolf, haven’t you.”

“I’ve had you.”

“Not for years, you haven’t.” Rin shifts and stretches out his legs so he’s mirroring Sousuke’s posture, propping himself up on his elbows and putting his feet next to the curve and bow of Sousuke’s chest. Sousuke looks at them vacantly, but doesn’t tell Rin to move.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, I haven’t.”

After a few moments, he looks up at Rin, sharp and swift, and there it is, that fire. Suddenly tension is crackling from him like electricity. “What happened, Rin?”

Rin feels the need to move back, away from Sousuke. He is frightening when he snaps into life, the same way it’s frightening to swim against him. It is not that he is violent, or uncontrolled – in fact, it’s the inverse. It is the steady advance from the shadows, the shark swimming towards you from the sucking black depth at the corner of your vision, in complete and total control.

“Tell me what happened,” he says again, insisting.

“I already did,” Rin says, unsteady.

The frown disappears, and Sousuke’s mouth twists in a way that’s almost, _almost_ unfamiliar to Rin in its vulnerability. Almost unfamiliar, because he saw something like it last night, under the glow of the lamps.

And here’s what’s different, Sousuke’s not in complete and total control any more.

Rin really _is_ bad for him.

“But you haven’t – you haven’t really…” Sousuke sighs. “I missed you,” he says.

Rin swallows and breathes in and out once, deeply. “I missed you too,” he says roughly. “It was a bad time and I should have kept in contact. I just didn’t feel like I could.” He isn’t sure he wants to go into details with Sousuke about it, about the way he destroyed relationships one by one, the sick grim accomplishment as he pushed each thing he loved so far away it couldn’t hurt any more. Sousuke is seeing him now as he should be, as the captain surrounded by friends, as the boy who’s got it together in the sweet summer warm, as the swimmer whose name will be spoken around the world, two steps away from being a champion.

He wants them to be side by side in this eternal summer happiness, the reach and stretch and burn for something bigger. He doesn’t want to rehash stories about winters and foreign countries and years of aching.

Again, they have reached a point of difference between them, and are butting heads.

“Do we have to talk about it?” Rin says angrily when Sousuke doesn’t reply.

Sousuke clears his throat and runs his hand through his hair roughly. “Well,” he says. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“How so?”

“When we were kids, I couldn’t swim in a relay with you. We were too different, or too similar, or something. But I didn’t think it was a problem because – because you’d be there forever, whether we swam together or not.”

Rin’s palms begin to sweat. He flattens his hand out against the cool blue of the bedsheets and looks at the shell-like shine of his nails. “Yeah,” he says, low, guilt stirring in his stomach like a beast.

“Then you left,” Sousuke says after a pause, almost cheerful, and it’s like being punched in the face. “And you stopped writing. And I thought about you for five years, and you came back, and you’ll leave again. I want to swim with you before that happens. I’m not stupid any more.”

“You sure about that,” Rin mutters. His throat is tight.

“Not really,” Sousuke sighs. Rin chances a glance up at him. Sousuke is still looking away, down at Rin’s feet, and as Rin looks he swallows, his throat moving, and gently as a doctor touches a wound, touches Rin’s bare ankle with his fingertips.

Rin stiffens, and with a jolt Sousuke looks up at him, asking with his eyes if he’s crossed some line. They hold each other’s gaze for a few moments and because Sousuke has never been one for hesitation, or doing things half-way, he moves his hand up to Rin’s calf, just below his knee, and flattens his palm over cotton, over skin. The moonlight shines on his bare neck. He is a pattern of bright pale skin, shadow, hair like dark ink and hidden eyes, and Rin feels this is getting a little out of control. He shivers. The air is cold. It feels like being caught in a dream.

Sousuke’s eyes are lidded, his mouth firm. It is like his entire being is concentrated in this one simple touch. He looks so determined, as he always does, but Rin can see the fragility and fear laced through it, a kind of grief around the hard lines of Sousuke’s face, and the guilt thickens in his chest.

“Who says I’ll leave this time?” he says, too quickly and too loud, just to break the awful, sad silence. “We’re gonna be famous, right?”

Sousuke looks up at him, eyes shimmering. “Yeah.” His hand is an unreal weight on Rin’s leg. “Yeah,” he repeats, more of a breath than a word, and he looks like Rin has just given him the entire world. Rin cannot breathe. Rin cannot think. Rin cannot –

“Don’t let anything get in your way, Rin,” Sousuke is saying, but Rin barely hears the words because they come in a blurred rush. Sousuke is moving, quickly, his hand skimming up Rin’s thigh and resting on his hip, moving up on to his knees and forward so he’s leaning over Rin. His other hand lands next to Rin’s head, and the whole world is Sousuke, and Rin is drowning in him.

Without even thinking, Rin reaches up and catches the thin fabric of Sousuke’s tank top with one hand, holding on tight. “I won’t,” he promises, his blood pounding in his ears. “I won’t. Nothing’s gonna get in our way and I’m not gonna – I’m not gonna leave you this time, Sousuke.” He babbles because he can barely take the way Sousuke is looking at him.

Sousuke drops his head then in a swift rush, and his face is buried in the crook between Rin’s neck and shoulder. Rin’s hand is pressed between the weight of their torsos, beneath the solidity and the realness of Sousuke’s muscles, bones, heat. “I could have helped you, Rin,” Sousuke says, and the way Rin can feel his lips moving hotly against his skin makes his fingers twitch. “I always knew you best.”

“You did, you always did,” Rin rambles frantically, as if Sousuke’s the one who needs help, who needs comforting, and maybe right now he is. Rin has years’ worth of apologies in him but he slides his hand up Sousuke’s chest and curls his fingertips into the warm ridge of his collarbone instead. Sousuke breathes out heavily against his neck and collapses, folds against him, a hot and overwhelming weight on Rin’s chest. Rin winces and drags his hand out from between them, and tangles it in Sousuke’s hair.

“I’m such an idiot, such an idiot,” Rin says to the ceiling, looking at the patterns of shadow on the white plaster.

Sousuke’s hand tightens on his hip and then finally, finally he kisses him, a hot wet press against the place where Rin’s neck and shoulder meet, and Rin gasps. “You’re not an idiot,” Sousuke growls, moving lower so the words are muffled against Rin’s collarbone. Rin’s face is burning. He feels hot and cold all at once. On some logical level he knows that he _is_ an idiot, and that this fierce love Sousuke is offering up tonight is only denying the reality of the way Rin treated him. That with determination and a sort of feverish worship Sousuke is trying to put things right, when nothing is his fault. Nothing at all. He knows he does not deserve this devotion. He takes it anyway, because he is greedy.

“We’re going to be famous, Sousuke,” he says, and saying the words is like wine, is like water after a drought, is like a religious experience, in the way that it makes Sousuke groan and shift so his thigh is between Rin’s. Holy light blazes somewhere, or it could just be a shadow passing across the paleness of Sousuke’s back. Rin bucks his hips upwards.

“You and me,” he breathes, the power he has in this moment threading through his veins. Their hearts are like the beating of war drums, a relentless and bloody pound. And in one swift move, like the shark lunging from the shadows, Sousuke takes away that power with a kiss. It is chaste, close-mouthed – his fingers are tender and sweet against Rin’s neck, the lightest of presses on his shivery skin, and like this, Sousuke takes back control. Rin is left fluttering, unsure, at the gentleness of it.

“I’ll help you,” Sousuke murmurs against Rin’s jaw. “I’ll be by your side. You’ll need me.”

Rin has a shudder of frightened, besotted happiness.

“You can’t do anything for me,” he snaps, tightening his fingers in Sousuke’s short hair, utterly bewildered and in love and resorting to irritation. “You’re going to make your way to the top, and so will I, and neither of us need to do anything for the other. You know that’s how it is.”

Sousuke kisses him once, twice, three times. Rin makes a noise of frustration against his mouth and pulls him in closer, kissing back hungrily. It is awkward and wet and their teeth click and Rin could almost sob. He hopes he won’t. Sousuke is…he’s just so much, he smells so nice, he’s something else.

Any grasp Rin thought he had on this situation is completely gone as they keep kissing and somehow stopping just doesn’t happen. He’s not sure how long it goes on for, he’s not sure where his hands go, or what his mouth is doing, except that Sousuke likes it, makes the occasional soft noise into his mouth, and groans when Rin grinds upwards against him.  He is breathing hard through his nose as he runs his hands down Sousuke’s back and then slides them up under his thin shirt, feeling the muscles shift. Sousuke jolts at the contact of hands on bare, hot skin, and skims his hand up Rin’s side. His fingers brush Rin’s nipple, lightly, and then again, deliberate, and something twists deep inside Rin. That’s it. He’s hard and so is Sousuke against his hip and he’s not even going to try any more. This is happening. He would try to catalogue every sensation, and how he feels about them, but he just cascades down and down and down into a blur of guilty, chest-aching arousal. Falling, falling, gone.

Sousuke pulls back and looks at Rin. His eyes are wide, pupils blown, and he is breathing hard, as though they’ve been doing so much more than just kissing. Rin’s stomach lurches and he sees what it is that’s got him so wound up, has him bursting at his seams, has his dick hard and flushed and straining.

It’s the devotion in Sousuke’s eyes. The way he says without words that he’d follow Rin anywhere. The way he is looking at Rin right now as though he is starving, and Sousuke has never shown that kind of weakness before, _ever._ Only for Rin. He is heavy and hot with the knowledge of all this. It annoys him. It makes his veins itch.

Sousuke swallows, his eyes lidded and intense. Rin wants to crawl away from that gaze and crawl into it all at the same time.

“Is there really nothing I can do for you?” his best friend asks, quiet and hoarse.

 _Oh god,_ Rin thinks. With the same feeling he has in the moments before a big race, crouched on the starting block, muscles tight and burning with anticipation, he clears his throat and says: “Do what you like.”

And he only stutters on the first syllable a little bit.

Sousuke dips his head and closes his eyes, like he’s praying, and then his lips are hot on Rin’s collarbone.

“Sousuke,” Rin says, strangled.

He bites down. Hard.

Rin has to suck his lower lip into his mouth and fist a hand into the bedsheets to keep from making some sort of embarrassing noise. The pain flares, delicious, and fades to a throb. Sousuke licks across the spot he’s just bitten, his tongue smooth and wet, and Rin wants to die. He shoves the thigh wedged between Sousuke’s legs upwards, and Sousuke half-gasps, half-moans, shoving one hand into Rin’s hair and sliding up to kiss him, licking into his mouth. Rin’s hair gets in both their mouths and there is a few brief moments of spitting and swearing until they get it together.

After a while of the fumbling, euphoric dissonance that is their kissing, Rin begins to think that maybe Sousuke has forgotten about that thing he didn’t actually say he was going to do but they both knew he wanted to do.

In the same second that the thought crosses his mind, Sousuke pulls away.

“Hi,” Rin says weakly. His lips feel buzzing and swollen.

“Hello,” Sousuke says seriously. He tucks Rin’s hair, which has come loose again, behind his ear. He places one hand on Rin’s stomach, fingers splayed.

“Can I…?” he asks, hesitantly.

“I said you could do what you like,” Rin tells him, tracing his fingers lightly over Sousuke’s cheekbone.

No more words are said.

Sousuke kisses a trail down his neck, over his chest, drags his teeth lightly over a nipple. Rin keeps his eyes closed tight, looking at the stars behind his lids.

He feels fingers skim over his waistband as Sousuke’s mouth brushes over the skin just below his navel. It is a shiver-bright touch, lingering, unsure, and then the cold air hits his dick as his pants and briefs are pulled down swiftly. Rin gasps, because _god_ does Sousuke move quickly when he’s made up his mind.

Rin forces his eyes open and props himself up. Sousuke just barely brushes his lips over the head, and Rin whimpers. Sousuke looks up, his eyes boring into Rin’s, and deliberately, slowly, sucks the tip into his mouth. Oh. _Oh._ His eyes are pools, pools on _fire,_ water can’t be on fire, Rin’s dick can’t be in his mouth, Sousuke can’t have come back after all these years, he can’t possibly still love him so much -

Sousuke’s eyes flutter closed. One of his hands is firm on Rin’s hip, the other wraps itself around the base of his dick. His tongue licks up the shaft and Rin collapses back, his head hitting the mattress with a soft _thunk._ He stares up at the ceiling. _He’s done this before._ And it’s partly that thought, not just the wet warmth of Sousuke’s mouth, that makes him whine and twist his hips upwards. And it’s partly the thought that maybe, sometimes, Sousuke had wished those other boys were Rin. Maybe. Maybe Rin’s arrogant. Maybe he’s too arrogant, since he’s the one who left. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking that this would be better if Rin was standing and Sousuke was on his knees. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about altars and worship and Sousuke’s wide, bright blue eyes, his bowed head. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about deserts and droughts and tipping crystal water into Sousuke’s chapped, starving mouth.

Maybe this is a dream.

The room is dark blue, is silent, is like the floor of the ocean. There is no noise except Rin’s gasping, and the gentle hum of the airconditioner, and Rin’s blood in his ears like the sea in a shell, and the wet noises of Sousuke’s mouth, and all these things are so loud. Rin hears each one, acute and awful, but it’s still so _silent._ And he is so embarrassed, and it feels so good, and should he tell Sousuke he is probably going to come in about two seconds if he keeps doing that with his tongue –

He has been trying to keep quiet but now he can’t help it, a repressed whine in his chest breaking through his bruised lips becoming a keen, broken into jagged pieces with harsh, hurting breaths. From this angle, without lifting his head, all he can see is the darkness of Sousuke’s hair, slicked with moonshine.

Dark-haired swimmer boys will always ruin him, it seems.

Sousuke digs his nails into Rin’s hip, and the skin tears, and it feels like an insult – with a shout, Rin comes in his mouth. It is not the best orgasm in the world, to be honest, his rushing thoughts had been louder than the shockwaves of pleasure, but he is still left shaking against sweaty sheets. He stares upwards, feeling a little like he’s just been dumped by one of those waves back in Australia, the ones that slam you against the sand and leave you boneless, flooded.

There is a cough, and real life comes crowding back in. Rin blinks away the spots in his vision, and sits up. They stare at each other.

Some of Rin’s come is smeared across Sousuke’s bottom lip.  It’s a good look on him.

“…thanks,” Rin says, unable to think of anything else.

Sousuke swallows, and laughs, looking down. His smile is so warm and so real and so familiar Rin has an almost unbearable rush of affection for him. “Thank _you_ ,” he says eventually, still grinning.

“Come here,” Rin says gruffly, reaching forward and grabbing Sousuke’s shoulder, pulling him towards him. Favours need to be returned, even if this thing is just for tonight. Just a one-off, a sweet, salty, confusing dream. Favours still need to be returned.

 

\-----

 

After Sousuke has come pearly white over Rin’s hand and collapsed into his arms, a heavy, sweaty weight, Rin says: “Have I ever told you you smell nice?”

“No,” Sousuke says, his voice dark with sleepiness. They hold each other, breathing slowing down, sweat cooling, blanket tangled around their feet.

“Well, you do.” Rin wriggles out of the loop of Sousuke’s arms and sits up.

“Rin.”

“Yeah?” Rin looks back at him.

“Stay,” Sousuke says, reaching out to pull him back. His eyes are pleading.

This time, Rin stays.

**Author's Note:**

> (totally my first time writing any kinda smut help)


End file.
